Agricultural innovation and resilience in a long-lived early farming community: the 1,500-year sequence at Neolithic to early Chalcolithic Çatalhöyük, central Anatolia

Agricultural resilience at Çatalhöyük was sustained over 1,500 years through flexible cropping strategies. The study reveals that the community's ability to adapt—by integrating minor crops or contaminants into staple diets—was underpinned by three key factors: an initially diverse crop spectrum, modular social structures enabling household-level experimentation, and an agglomerated social morphology allowing successful innovations to scale. This case challenges 'boom and bust' narratives of early farming societies, offering insights into long-term sustainability in central Anatolia and broader agro-ecological systems.

Bogaard, A., Filipović, D., Fairbairn, A., Green, L., Stroud, E., Fuller, D., & Charles, M. (2017). Agricultural innovation and resilience in a long-lived early farming community: the 1,500-year sequence at Neolithic to early Chalcolithic Çatalhöyük, central Anatolia. Anatolian Studies, 67, 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0066154617000072